Perspective
by anathemawrites
Summary: Across the Universe character studies based on prompts and people. Max and Jude are up!
1. Max

**Perspective**_  
Creeno

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__Bunch of one shots on individual Across the Universe characters. ;D Enjoy.

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__**Notes for Max: **__So far, he's been the easiest. I am so not joking; Jude can be an utter bitch when he wants to. Castrophany, the word I used for two, actually isn't a word. It's from _Fire Coming from a Monkey's Head_ by Gorillaz, a combination of catastrophe and cacophony. Use it enough, get it in the dictionary.

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**1. lost worth**

"Ten more, Carrigan," grunts Lt. Munch and Max, for the umpteenth time, wishes he could just bludgeon the fucker's head in.

"Yessir," he hisses instead, and drops to all fours to do another round of pushups. The career military's are easy to pick out: gnarled faces, grim manners, a near frightening loyalty to this fucking war, and a near tangible hate for the draftees.

Max pushes, though. It's exactly like Princeton: pushing to beat the snobby bastards who you couldn't care less about in the street, grinning and moving on even when they're hurling shit at you.

(_smiling suppresses the gag reflex_)

The biggest difference, though, is that he can't just find a Brit that smokes like a chimney late at night and a car that isn't decked in camouflage and reeks of dried blood and jungle, and drive out of there any moment.

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**2. castrophany**

It's a bigger bang than what he expects.

Aim, _fire!_ — not quite bang.

It's a near goddamn _roar_ to Max, the sound the metalandbullet make before another bullet with Uncle Sam's kiss on it kills another Charlie.

He still hears it in his dreams, this near unrecognizable sound.

He hates the fact that he was the one who made it.

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**3. taste**

He pulls Jude's hand to his mouth and laps up the red juices. The Brit makes a startled, confused noise as Max licks at his fingers again. Marijuana gave him _hella_ the case of munchies, but the damn box of Cap'n Crunch was in the kitchen, too far away.

"Uh, mate?"

"Nnnnyeah?" Max moves onto Jude's pinky and ring fingers, as Jude face starts to grow red to match the puddle of red juice and squashed fruit he's lying in. He'll probably regret it, but for now he's so baked he didn't even know how to tell his hand to move away from Max.

"Mind telling me about this sudden act of cannibalism?"

Max laughs around Jude's fingers; guy couldn't move but he could still pull out the big words. "Strawberries, man," he watches Jude blink and can see the gears starting to whirr a little bit in the Liverpudlian's head. "Juice is all over you."

It clicks in Jude starts to pull his hand away, but Max utilizes some of the reflexes the Army's giving him to jerk it back. "Y'couldn' get a bloody towel?"

"You're here, Judith," Max grins and pulls Jude closer, who's given up the fight. "Now, shut up like a good human sacrifice, huh?"

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**4. shrapnel**

One moment, Max is firing futilely into the dense jungle he's still unable to navigate on this godforsaken patch of earth and the next, the world tumbles and spins, his head aches and then there's a Charlie right before him. He's got a dead soldier's gun in his hands, aimed straight at Max, and he can feel his heart stutter as he realizes that his own gun is cast aside.

(_what will you do?_)

Charlie's sweating as bad as him, hands shaking with the gun in his hands, and all Max can do is stare, unable to move.

(_it's…it's not _what_ you do, it's _'ow_ you do it_)

And, mercifully, Charlie doesn't shoot.

Instead, a plane hits the earth not even a kilometer away from them, and pieces of it sail through the air to pierce Max's right side, out of the frying pan, into the fire.

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**5. richest king**

He loves the Blue, every moment of detached bliss it gives him.

He doesn't have to feel the pieces of the dam plane trying to work themselves into his skin, leaving mottled scars of exploded stars on his skin. Doesn't have to feel himself break everytime he looks up at Lucy's crying, sad face and think _I'll die just like Daniel, leave her all alone_. Can ignore the empty feeling he has, knowing that Jude is gone.

"Hold still," purrs the beautiful nurse, Blue just beyond his reach.

He is Ozymandias, King of kings, when he and the Blue come together.

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**6. father**

"Get out," Max glares at him. How dare he?

"I came to see you," Mr. Carrigan with his sweater and glasses and money and ambition says and it seeps into Max skin like jungledark and want of New York cold. "Lucy said—"

"I said get out," Max rises out of the Blue, blazing and bright and angry. "I don't want to hear your bullshit, see you throw around your money, old man. You and I know you _guilted_ Lucy into this. All you had to say was Daniel, didn't you?" He feels as if he should be holding a gun, scrambling away, but he keeps himself focused. "Why don't you go ahead and leave quietly before I make a fuss and I get to see your ass dragged out?"

Max never sees him again.

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**7. prudence**

"What'd you tell her?" Max shouts over the din of the crowd as Lucy goes off with Jude. She looked a little subdued after talking to Prudence.

"That I'd slept with you and Jude!" She screams back, face flushed in happiness as Sadie continues. Max laughs uproariously, getting a look from the girl of the night.

He certainly wasn't going to clean _that_ one up.

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**8. lucy**

They don't talk, directly, about Daniel.

She just leans on his shoulder and his hand goes around her and they mourn together in their own sort of way.

And it's even worse when she has to hand him a letter, a letter that could sentence him to the same fate.

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**9. jude**

The letters are the only things that come out dry and nearly untouched. Max only has three, but every single one means so much to him, even if puling them out reminds him of jungledark and twisted bodies.

And he'd return the favor now.

_Hey, Jude…

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_Done! :D See that pretty periwinkle/blue button? Click it and tell me what you think. It's a damn good motivator, yeah?_


	2. Jude

**Perspective  
**_Creeno

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Bunch of one shots on individual Across the Universe characters. ;D Enjoy.**

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Notes for Jude: **__Hey, it's been awhile. C: Jude was a little harder, trying to get his bitterness across.

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**1. put out the fire**

Jude tries not to think about Lucy(_smell of fresh daises_), about drawing, about New York's busy, loud, eternally loud streets.

He sits away from the boys, looks up at the sky and pretends like he loves the wet, stink of ship and metal. Pretends that the ocean is what he needs, not an apartment.

Tries to quell the longing, the longing for Sadie's song, for Jojo's guitar, for Max---

Bitterly, he feels hot tears on his cheeks.

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**2. start**

"We need some money," Max grouses, sitting in the little diner. He's starting to grow a beard and Jude grins as he takes a drag from his cigarette.

"Well, I can'very well ge' a job, now can I?" Jude shifts in the chair as the waitress hands him the receipt and pen. "Ta'," he says, picking up the pen to sign for Max.

Max snorts as Jude imitates his father's signature perfectly, stroking at his chin, glint in his eye. "Actually, I think I have an idea." At that, the Liverpudlian looks up as Max plucks up the bottle of ketchup and shoves a napkin to Jude.

"D'you want me to _eat_ it, then?" Jude cocks an eyebrow, half amused.

Max scowls.

Twenty minutes later, the waitress is greeted with not a tip but a pile of curvy, curious drawings.

The name on the corners does not match the name on the credit card.

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**3. not easy**

"Molly!"

Jude doesn't look up as the girls run past him, laughing and giggling. He hunches his shoulders up and grips his books harder as he trudges through the rain and mud.

He doesn't understand how they can tell that his dad was American. Doesn't think it's his eyes and it's not as if he talks to any of them….

He sniffs and rubs his hands over his ruddy face, grimacing. At least his nose wasn't broken this time.

When(not _if_) he met his dad, the first thing he was going to ask is _how can you tell_?

(years later he remembers after the fact and wonders why he ever cared)

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**4. hubert**

Jude wants to be stubborn.

He wants to spit venom at this _father_ of his as he enters the jail cell.

Wants to be a bitter child, a petulant thorn in his side.

But he can't do it.

He didn't have to come, but he did.

It's recognition, even if it's small.

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**5. molly**

He dates girls, leaves them.

Never stays with them, never has because girls aren't much for dreamers.

But Molly...

For some reason, for all her reality, she smiles at Jude and stays.

It's too bad, as he looks at her with dull eyes, that he didn't.

It would've been safer.

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**6. paco**

There is something wrong about this man as he brings in that stupid telly.

He may not be a complete and utter git, but Jude has eyes in his head. He can see that this man has more than peace on his mind.

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**7. sadie**

"What's the matter, sweet pea?" Sadie smiles warmly at Jude as he snaps up from looking at the worn sweater in his fingers.

He pauses, voice caught in his throat, swallowing tightly. As beautiful as Sadie is, honestly, Jude can never quite _not_ think of her as a motherly figure. "It's just..." he averts his eyes as Sadie sits down, "Sometimes..."

"You miss her?" Sadie says, and Jude is relieved when he nods. He knows that Sadie knows he doesn't write to her anymore and she looks at him. "Only one way to cure that."

But how does Jude say _I've become an artist who lives on hash and a beautiful girl_ to his mum of all people?

When he looks up to ask, as usual, Sadie is gone.

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**8. jojo**

Sometimes, when Jude's up late, when the party's dead and the people are gone and everyone's asleep, when it's just Jude and color and walls, sometimes, he can hear Jojo sing.

It's soft, not interrupting anything, not pushing and fighting against Jude's flow, just wrapping around it.

Those nights, when Jojo's just singing softly, sometimes, Jude turns out the best artwork.

Jojo will watch as Jude emerges, filthy and reeking of paint and charcoal and their eyes will connect and it passes through them, some unspeakable sense of _belonging_.

Then it's over and he shuffles to Lucy's room, never to speak of it.

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**9. prudence**

"Y'sure y'don't want t'say goodbye t'the others?" Jude whispers as he walks Prudence out to the cab. His chest constricts as she smiles in her small way.

She grasps his hands, tiny and fragile compared to him. "Jude, I _can't_ stay here. Sure, I'll miss sleeping between you and Max, but if I'm ever gonna get over Sadie, I need to go."

He frowns nonetheless as he hugs her one more time.

He knows there's no guarantee he'll ever see her again.

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**10. lucy**

Maybe when---

Maybe when _bombs start dropping_?

Jude barely contains his rage as he slams his shot back down in anger. Not even Jojo's guitar could soothe him now as he thought about it now.

He was giving everything, _everything_ he had to her. The only reason he hadn't run after Max was because of Lucy, hadn't just broken under the weight of it all was _Lucy_.

But fucking Paco, fucking Don Juan shagger was filling Lucy's head with notions.

He loved her, but she needed to see she wasn't the only one suffering in this goddamn war.

Jude leaves the bar, intent on the git's hideaway.

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**11. martha**

Mum was always tired, always stretched.

Jude always made sure, made _damn_ sure that she was never stretched because of him. Always made sure to take as many jobs(including stealing) as he could, always worked hard, always gave her as little trouble as possible.

But he breaks her heart when he goes after his father and doesn't even know it.

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**12. max**

They lie on the roof.

Max is no longer just a Princeton dropout. Now he is a scarred veteran dragged into a war he had no stock in.

Jude is no longer just a dock worker. Now he is an artist without direction, trying to help his friend into the daylight and not slip himself.

But at the end of the night, they are still what they were after a crazy night in Princeton:

Best friends, scars, ink, and all.

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_Kindly review. C:  
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